9
“Guess what?” said Alice, two days later.
I was out in the yard, weeding our fledgling vegetable garden, when my cell phone rang. Truth be told, I’m not much of a gardener. This was my first attempt to grow something that people might actually be expected to eat.
Having a baby had ramped up my nesting instincts and this was the result. So far, however, I wasn’t sure whether my weed-pulling was helping or hindering the tomatoes I was trying to grow. So frankly, I was perfectly happy to be interrupted.
I removed my gardening gloves and sat down in the grass. With luck, this might take a while.
“Candy Pine called me,” Alice said. “Apparently she’s been touching base with all the Pine Ridge clients after . . . you know, what happened. She wanted to assure me that business is going to proceed as usual at Pine Ridge and that I shouldn’t make any other dog care arrangements for Berkley.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. It would feel really weird to go back over there.”
Faith had been lying nearby, chewing on a stick, while I worked. Now that I was taking a break, she got up and came over. The Poodle lay down beside me and rested her head in my lap. I tangled my fingers in her topknot absently as I spoke.
“Then maybe you want to choose another place,” I said. “It’s not like you’d made a commitment to Pine Ridge. The way things turned out, you never even filled out an application.”
“In theory you’re right, but here’s the problem. There are no other places. At least none that are conveniently located. Land is at such a premium in lower Fairfield County that the other similar facilities I managed to find are all pretty far away. We’re talking Ridgefield or Milford.”
“Well, that won’t work,” I said flatly. The whole point was for Alice to drop Berkley off on her way to work, not commute an extra hour out of her way.
“Tell me about it.”
“So now what?”
“I guess I’m thinking that I should give Pine Ridge another try. Um . . . Mel?”
It wasn’t like I couldn’t guess what she was going to ask next.
“I don’t want to go back there alone. I mean, who would? So how busy are you today? What would you think of going with me?”
I surveyed the yard and sighed. “Here’s how busy I am. I’m gardening.”
Alice snorted into the phone. I was pretty sure she was trying to cover a laugh.
“You hate plants.”
“I don’t hate them exactly. I just never seem to have much luck keeping them alive. I thought maybe outdoor plants were different. You know, like grass. That stuff pretty much grows itself. I figured tomatoes could do the same thing.”
“And are they?” asked Alice.
“Not so far,” I admitted.
“What about Kevin?”
The change of subject threw me for a moment, but I rallied.
“He’s growing just fine.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Now she was laughing. “Do you want to bring him with us?”
Notice how she’d moved us smoothly to the assumption that we both were going to Pine Ridge. As if I’d already agreed to that. Which I was pretty sure I hadn’t.
What the heck, I thought. I wasn’t accomplishing anything constructive in the garden. My assault on the weeds, or the tomatoes, or whatever it was I’d been pulling out of the ground could wait.
“Sam’s here,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he can cover for me. Why don’t you come and pick me up?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
That was fast for Alice. She must have already had one foot out the door.
Inside the house, I found Sam holed up in his office. He was playing around with a new software design for some clients he’d had for years.
Everything else was quiet. That in itself was unusual in my experience, but it felt kind of nice. Soccer camp had started and Davey wouldn’t be home until late afternoon. Kevin was upstairs napping in his crib. The baby monitor on Sam’s credenza was blissfully silent.
“Think you can hold down the fort for an hour?” I asked.
Sam looked up from his computer screen. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Where are you going?”
“Alice is picking me up. She still needs a place for Berkley and Pine Ridge is open for business again. She wants to go have another look.”
“Sure,” said Sam. “That’s fine.”
He sounded distracted and probably was. Otherwise, having uttered the Pine Ridge name, I might have been subjected to more questions. Sam was looking in my direction, but I was willing to bet that his thoughts were still centered on the application on the screen.
“I shouldn’t be long,” I said.
“Right. See you later.” He was back to work before I’d even left the room.
I let myself out and walked down to the end of the driveway to wait for Alice so that the Poodles wouldn’t bark at her arrival and wake up Kevin. True to her word, she appeared a few minutes later.
“I called Candy back and told her we were coming,” she said as I climbed in the car.
I reached around and fastened my seatbelt. Alice was already pulling away from the curb.
“Good. Let’s hope this visit works out better than last time.”
Alice lifted her foot from the gas pedal. Immediately, the Honda began to slow. She took her eyes from the road and turned to look at me.
“If you think for one minute that it won’t, you had better tell me now. Because if there’s even a remote possibility of something else going wrong, I’m not going.”
“I was kidding,” I said quickly.
That wasn’t strictly true, but I figured it probably made Alice feel better. At any rate, she resumed driving.
“When you were talking to Candy, what did she say about Steve?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Not one word about the whole business. She never even mentioned his name. And it’s not like I was going to bring it up.”
“I wonder if the police know who killed him.”
Alice spared me another look. “She probably would have said something about that.”
“The newspapers haven’t. I’ve been reading the coverage and it hasn’t even mentioned any suspects. But Candy is family. She must know more than The Advocate does.”
“It’s only been a couple of days. Maybe there’s nothing to know yet.”
Arriving midday, Alice and I found Pine Ridge looking much the same as it had on my first visit. There was only one other car in the front parking lot. Things appeared relatively quiet.
That illusion didn’t last long, however. As we approached the door to the building, it flew open and a man came striding out. Candy filled the doorway behind him.
“Don’t come back here,” she said angrily. “We have nothing to say. Nobody here will talk to you.”
Body blocking the doorway, hands on her hips, she watched until the man climbed into the other car. Then she turned away and noticed us for the first time. Her expression softened slightly, but she still looked annoyed.
“Sorry about that. Those damn reporters are everywhere. They’re like ghouls, trolling around and searching for bad news.”
Then abruptly, she stopped talking and stuck out her hand. “And they’re making me so crazy that I’ve forgotten my manners. You must be Alice, Berkley’s mom. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Candy.”
Considering what she’d been through recently, Candy was looking pretty good. No dark shadows or red-rimmed eyes. She smiled as she shook Alice’s hand. I guessed she was working on keeping up a good front for the customers.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go inside and talk.”
Madison glanced up briefly as we passed through the reception area, then went back to perusing her magazine. When Candy opened the door in the far wall that led to the offices, Alice hung back. I slowed my steps and waited for her.
“I’m sure there won’t be anything to see,” I said under my breath. Indeed, I could already see that the door to Steve’s office was firmly shut.
“Even so . . .” Alice’s voice squeaked.
Already halfway down the hall, Candy noticed for the first time that we hadn’t kept up. She stopped and turned.
“I thought we’d talk in my office,” she said. “Would you rather we went somewhere else?”
Even as I started to shake my head, Alice said, “Yes, please.”
“No problem.” Candy retraced her steps. “Let’s go back outside.”
With Candy leading the way, we took the path that circled the building and ended up on the back walkway that led to the outdoor paddocks. Dogs, some by themselves, others in groups, were frolicking in several of the enclosures.
The nearest paddock held Cookie, the English Springer we’d met the other day. The black and white spaniel had flopped down in the shade, panting. A red rubber ball was balanced between her front legs.
Candy glanced over at the dog and smiled. “Coming out here was a good idea. Now you can see for yourselves that everything at Pine Ridge is proceeding absolutely normally. Of course, Steve’s death was a huge blow to us all, but I want you to know that the quality of our care and our customer service will remain unchanged.”
The speech sounded like something Candy had repeated many times over the last couple of days. Days she should have been able to spend taking care of herself, rather than reassuring customers and tending to business.
“I know you said you had some questions for me,” she said gamely. “Go ahead. Feel free to ask me anything.”
I looked at Alice. She looked at me. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing. All at once, Aunt Peg’s concerns about emergency vets and the quality of kibble just didn’t seem that important anymore.
“I’m really sorry we took up your time,” I said to Candy. “It looks like you’re doing a great job. We don’t have any questions. Alice just needs to fill out an application, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“All right. If you say so.” Candy looked confused, but she recovered quickly. “We’ll have to return to the front office then. Madison has the application forms at the check-in desk.”
“I do need to know one thing,” Alice said as we resumed our stroll. “How soon will you have an opening for Berkley? I’m going back to work and I need to be able to make plans.”
“That’s easy, we can take him right away. You can start whenever you’re ready.”
“Really? That would be great. I’d had the impression that you were full and there might be a wait involved.”
“That was true before,” Candy said slowly, “but now things have changed somewhat.”
“You’ve lost clients in the last few days,” I said.
A short, sharp nod betrayed her annoyance.
“For some reason, people seem to think that Steve was Pine Ridge. That without him, we’ll be utterly unable to cope. And nothing could be further from the truth. Of course he was important here, on both a personal and a professional level. But this place has always been as much mine as it was his.
“Steve will be missed terribly in every aspect of what we do,” Candy said fiercely. “But the business will go on. It has to. We’ve worked much too hard to lose everything we put into it now.”
She turned her head away, and I got the impression that she was blinking back tears.
“Don’t worry,” I said gently, “you’ll recover. It will take time, but eventually everything will get back to normal. Your good clients will remember what a great job you did for them and come back. And as for the others, they’re just idiots. Who needs them anyway?”
“Right.” Candy’s voice sounded watery. “Who needs them? You wouldn’t believe some of the phone calls I’ve gotten. People say the most awful things. They tell me that after what happened to Steve, they wouldn’t feel safe leaving their dogs in my care.”
“Surely they don’t blame you for what happened?” Alice said incredulously.
“Who even knows what they think anymore? These last few days have been totally surreal. My whole life has been turned upside down. As if what happened to Steve wasn’t bad enough, now I have police and reporters nosing around everywhere. Everybody keeps asking questions but nobody has any answers. Those people who are worried about their dogs, how do they think I feel? This place is my business, my life, and now the worst thing is that I don’t feel safe here anymore either.”
Candy had stopped walking. Her hands were clenched into fists at her side. Her body hummed with tension.
“The only thing I can do . . . the only thing that makes my life even remotely bearable right now, is to put my head down and go back to work. I’ve lost my brother, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose Pine Ridge too.”
She looked so alone standing there, that without thinking I reached out and placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. I’m not big, but Candy felt tiny within the circle of my arms.
“Do you have any family you can call?” I asked. “Someone who could come and help out, or even just lend some support?”
“No, there was just me and Steve.” She offered up a wan smile. “The two of us against the world. That’s what we always said. So I guess there’s just me now.”
“And us,” Alice said stoutly. She’s always been a soft touch for a sad story. “Let us help you. Melanie and I will be your support team, at least until you can get back on your feet.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you, but it’s really not necessary.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. Candy lifted a hand and brushed it quickly away.
“Look at me,” she said, “bearing up when people behave horribly and then crying the first time someone tries to be nice. I’m really sorry about all this. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“There’s nothing the matter with you,” I said firmly. “You’re going through some terrible things right now. Of course they’re taking a toll on you. There’s no reason you should feel like you have to be strong. Certainly not in front of us.”
Candy swallowed heavily and forced another smile. “I’m fine now. Really. Let me just run inside and get that application for you.”
“Poor thing,” Alice said as soon as Candy was out of earshot. “We can’t just fill out the application and walk away. We have to do something to help her.”
“Candy needs customers,” I said, “so you’re helping her just by signing Berkley up for the program.”
“There must be something more.”
“Stop it,” I said.
Alice was all innocence. “Stop what?”
“Trying to make me feel guilty for not getting involved in Candy’s problems. It isn’t working. I’m busy all the time now. I have a new baby.”
“Liar. Even before Kevin arrived, you were always doing a hundred things at once. If you were so busy all the time, you wouldn’t be gardening.”
“I like gardening.”
“Say that to my face.”
All right, so I couldn’t.
What people saw in gardening was beyond me. It was an activity built around weeds, bugs, and dirt. And in the end, if you were lucky, you ended up with tomatoes nearly as good as the ones you could buy at the market.
I knew some people felt a sense of accomplishment, growing things with their own hands. But to me, it was nothing but a source of frustration.
Alice was still standing there glaring at me when Candy returned, paper in hand.
“If you want, you can fill this out at home and bring it back when you drop Berkley off for the first time,” she said. Then she stopped and looked at the two of us. “What’s the matter?”
“Melanie solves mysteries,” Alice blurted out. “She does it all the time. She’s really good at it.”
Candy turned and stared. “You do?”
“I’ve been lucky a couple of times.”
“She’s being too modest,” said Alice. “She’s like Nancy Drew. Melanie finds murderers and makes them confess. I was thinking maybe you could use her help.”
“Well . . . yeah.” Candy exhaled softly. “You’d be willing to do that? Really?”
As if Alice had left me any choice.
“I could try,” I said.